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Three big announcements today could upset the markets and give you boss-like chances.

Asia

The land of the rising sun might have put a wad in your pocket if you were on the ball early enough. Did the Japanese go to the shops this month? The household spending announcement at12.30am BST has been in decline for months but forecasts have been off the ball. More chances to play like boss with a JPN monetary policy statement (time tbc) due. This is looking more hawkish. Markets should perk up if the expected stimulus is announced. The Bank of Japan outlook report at 6am could give us a heads up about which way the government is going to jump.

Europe

Fail! European banks are freaking today with the 4pm BST announcement from the EBA Bank Stress results. Nerves are going to be frayed as Brexit’s recent spanner in the works could have weakened confidence and the test checks central banks abilities to cope.

USA

More chances to jump on the bandwagon or buck the trend around lunchtime with the US quarterly advance GDP announcement. This can be good for currency trading and is a biggie to make money (or lose it) today. With the US economy on the up and up, and more average Joe’s doing an honest day’s work, we predict a positive advance GDP announcement and a rise in the dollar. But do you know something we don’t?

You count on your stop loss to keep you out of trouble – don’t count on it too much

SparkProfit lets you earn points whether you predict the market will rise or fall. It’s the difference between the starting price and your prediction that makes the value of your trade bigger or smaller in the game. In the real markets, traders usually lose money if the stock they buy drops (unless they are shorting the trade, but more on that another time). The trick, just like SparkProfit, is to buy when you think the price is low compared to its true value and you believe it is going to rise.

But, as any SparkProfit player knows, stocks, currencies and other markets can be rather unpredictable. No matter what has happened historically there are many variables that can affect the direction of the market. So what should you do?

Many day traders constantly watch the markets ready to place a buy or sell order with their broker depending on movements in the market. And that is a good strategy which can maximise your profit by locking in a sell order at the peak and it can also protect you from losses if the market turns.

But for many of us who have busy lives with jobs and other commitments, it’s a strategy we simply can’t adopt. We are time poor so we need a different plan. This is where a Stop Loss Order comes in.

A Stop Loss Order is an instruction to the broker to sell at a certain price. That way you can relax a little knowing that even if the market drops, your losses will be capped even when you’re looking the other way.

All this sounds really good but there’s a question you need to ask yourself and it is:

Why aren’t Stop Loss Orders any good at stopping losses?

Wait – what? It’s true – like any market order, your broker can’t guarantee the price you’ll get so you could lose far more than you wanted.

Brokers make no guarantee as to the price the stop order finally fills at

The Stop Loss Order in the graphic above triggered the broker to place a sell order but time passes between the two events. In a fast market, the price may have moved significantly in that time so you lose a lot more than you allowed for.

And that’s not all. You could be faced with a stock gap down between trading days

So Stop Loss Orders are not as good as they first sounded, are they?

And that got us thinking. There should be a better way to trade. One where you don’t face losing everything. Doesn’t that sound better?

Nous beats expectations, raises £500,000 (US$750,000) from Angels and crowdfunding, to bring an ultra-low-risk trading service to millions of customers around the world.

London-based start-up Nous Global Markets today announced it has completed a successful round of funding that exceeded the initial target.

The company, which was created to educate people about the enjoyment and the challenges of financial markets, originally aimed to raise £350,000 but quickly reached that target and chose to halt over-funding at £500,000. The money was raised from a combination of Angel investors, Venture Capital and crowd-funding.

The investment is an important validation both of Nous’s traction since going live in 2014, having reached over 300,000 users at very low cost, and of their future plans. Nous will use the funds to release a revolutionary new trading application designed specifically for individuals that are excluded by current products.

Nous’ first round of funding was raised from private investors, predominantly senior finance and technology professionals at global investment banks. This second round brought crowd-funded investment via Syndicate Room‘s platform; as well as strategic investors such as Tantalus Capital, and K.V. Rao, CEO of California-based predictive analytics firm Aviso.

Justin Short, CEO of Nous, says:

“With the great success of our Spark Profit application we realised that there were millions of people with discretionary capital and the desire to trade in financial markets, but no way for them to do that economically. We will put the world’s most consumer-friendly trading system into their pockets: low-cost; ultra low-risk; and with up to 20x returns.”

Nous Global Markets was founded in September 2012 by Justin Short and four other former Merrill Lynch traders and technologists. Originally based in Tokyo it has since relocated to London and has received EIS Advance Assurance.

In January 2014, Short and his colleagues launched their free-to-play virtual trading game — ‘Spark Profit’ — which enables players to predict financial market movements with no risk, in return for cash prizes. Spark Profit’s uniquely visual, beginner-friendly interface and weekly cash rewards have already attracted over 300,000 users in 200 separate countries.

At the beginning of 2015, while learning more about their customers’ needs, they found that 95% of regular players wanted to trade their own money, preferably inside Spark Profit itself. A thorough review of the competition showed that there was indeed a very large opportunity to create a simple, low-risk way for people to trade — which would be a natural progression of the existing app and a validation of Nous’ “profit together” ethos. The new trading application will feature a unique combination of consumer-friendly features unavailable elsewhere. It is due for soft-launch in Q1 2016.

Contacts

About Nous

Nous, positioned at the intersection of Finance, Gaming and Education, was founded in 2012 by Justin Short and four other highly experienced traders and technologists. They saw an opportunity to empower people around the world to discover their own talents and benefit from access to global opportunities, via their smartphones. Nous launched Spark Profit, the free-to-play virtual trading game, in January 2014.

We love data at Nous Global Markets and this is why we pay for our user’s predictions on the markets. We think this data is valuable, uncorrelated and unique.

One market we’ve been keeping an eye on this week is the GBPUSD (pound dollar or ‘cable’) pair. There are two events this week which will, likely, get market participants involved:

The UK Parliamentary Elections are taking place today in the UK. Any uncertainty around the outcome of the election or a surprise outcome will impact the pound.

Non-Farm Payroll figures are released in the United States on Friday and this may impact all USD pairs including GBPUSD.

For now, this market is trading within the range set by yesterday’s price action; with resistance at 1.5290 and support at around 1.5150. So, the buyers and the sellers are in broad agreement with one another and price is moving sideways. The events of the next few days and any uncertainty around the outcome of the election will tip the balance one way or the other, we will get market flow and GBPUSD will likely move out of this range.. Fast…

So, where are our users positioning themselves coming into the end of this week? The picture gives an indication of the opinion of the crowd in SparkProfit for this week on GBPUSD.

What the crowd thinks of GBPUSD

We have observed buying pressure from the start of the week in SparkProfit on GBPUSD. The green line indicates the amount of bulls in the market and the red line shows the bears. The white line is a probabilistic signal based on the total long/short orders and compares the long and short orders in the game to randomly generated trades. That’s a mouthful! The short story is that this line gives the long or short bias of our players compared to trades from a room full of monkeys trading randomly.

The buy flow increased from the start of the week and was a leading indicator of the breakout to the upside in this case. The crowd is still net long but buy orders have not been increasing much over the last 24 hours as traders adopt a wait and see approach.

Its hard to know which way this is going to go but the chart below presents some levels to monitor which may give some opportunities to trade from on bounces or, if they break, retests.

Levels to watch for bounces or retests.

No Risk With SparkProfit

Which ever way you think GBPUSD is going to go, you can play GBPUSD risk free with SparkProfit.

Brent Oil Futures Break Resistance. Will Brent Find Acceptance Here?

Will Brent Find Support?

Brent futures broke through a significant level last week and are presently trading at a potential demand level. The fundamentals and pundits are still screaming a further bear market on this but it might be worth looking at where price could potentially go to given the recent price action.

The chart below shows a longer term view on Brent. We could have a potential ABCD pattern completing into the 69.50 area. This level is interesting as we have previous historic demand here from mid 2010 with the lows made where buyers came in (and old lows can become new highs). There is a strong bear candle from the start of December 2014 indicting some supply there a the time.

The long term view

Bitcoin – Will The Bears Reload?

The lows have held last week on Bitcoin and we have seen some corrective price action with a potential ABCD pattern forming into some interesting price structure.

Will we see selling on Bitcoin ?

The recent lows/demand zone at around 234.50 may see some shorting here. The strongly bearish candle from the start of April has also tipped the hand of the bears.

For now, the lows at 213 and the recent supply at 232 to 234.50 seem to be the levels to be aware of on this instrument.

Risk On Tap For The Week

AUD:

Mon 20 Apr: RBA gov speaks

Tues 21 Apr: Monetary Policy Meeting Minues

Wed 22 Apr: CPI

The bulls have it.. for now..

EUR:

Tues 21 Apr: German economic sentiment

Thur 23 Apr: French manufacturing PMI

Thur 23 Apr: German manufacturing PMI

Fri 24 Apr: German business climate

Fri 24 Apr: Euro-group Meetings

More upside for the Euro?

GBP:

Wed 22 Apr: MPC official rate votes

Thur 23 Apr: Retail sales numbers

Cable at a significant level

USD:

Thur 23 Apr: Unemployment claims

Fri 24 Apr: Durable goods orders

Which ever way you think these markets are going to go, you can play them risk free with SparkProfit.

USDJPY To Retest The Recent Highs?

A couple of interesting levels on the USDJPY worth keeping an eye on.

121.20 – some interesting market structure here recently with support (demand) turning into resistance (strong supply in mid March). We could imagine a scenario where there might be some more sell orders here. We are at the 78.6 retracement for those who like order in the universe with their breakfast.

122.05 – some sort of reaction at this level given the previous supply is within reason. We had previous strong supply and we have the 161 abcd completing into the highs.

Sell orders here somewhere?

The yen looks quite this week in terms of planned risk events.

GBPUSD: Broke The Lows Last Week

We broke the recent lows last week and are not trading near the 1.46. Whether you consider this a buy or sell opportunity, its a significant level for cable. The next level of significant support for GBPUSD is the 1.42 to 1.4350 area.

Where is the bottom for cable?

New events for Cable:

Tuesday 14 April – CPI

Friday 17 April – Average Earnings Index and Claimant Count Change

EURUSD: A Bounce Before Parity With The Dollar?

The long term charts still hints at the possibility of parity with the dollar for euro.

Euro to hit parity?

Closer to home, the recent lows from the start of March where the bears were trapped may give a small bounce.

Recent bear trap

The main event for Euro is on Wednesday 15th this week with the interest rate announcement and the usual press conference madness for this pair.

Traders will be watching the US Dollar this week after the news released on Friday around jobs data. Total non farm employment rose 252K and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.6% – both of these beating market expectations. These positive numbers were slightly offset by disappointing hourly wage numbers which demonstrate low wage growth.

So, it was a mixed bag for the dollar at the end of last week and there are a number of risk events for the Greenback which are worth being aware of going into the week: